Pater Familias … because I'm your FATHER!

Vacation Brain, Vacation Time Warp

April 20, 2010

What wonders does family time away from home work for you?

A week in Florida goes by so slowly, so fast, like life entire

Sebastian, FL – Sixth day since we left the Unsuburb, and not a post, Tweet, pic or online vid of anything, not Girl Child and Auntie Annie’s dance contest in the living room or the 13-14-foot alligator swimming not far from our rental house. (Saw the reptile on a pontoon boat tour that started over in town, and now nobody wants to go canoeing or kayaking with me. Shame, too. The boats come with the house.)

Point is, lack of subject-matter does not explain why I went dark last week. Such silence is a longstanding habit, a way to sanctify our most special day and make them more, you know, ours. Years ago Minerva and I started to vacation incommunicado, inasmuch as work and other inflexible demands allowed.

Pre-child, we even did a trip or two without a camera. As media folk, we had jobs that involved having proxy experiences to pass on to others, and it felt great to do things for our own private reasons and keep the whole damn thing to ourselves. It burned off friends and relatives, who wanted something to look at, but we didn’t really care. With the kid, naturally, we’re back to taking pics, but more trying to freeze our moments with Girl Child and hang onto them. Futile, for sure, but 100 percent parental. Besides that, GC herself loves pictures. With so little past, she prizes images, mementoes, stories about what happened when she was younger.

Now, at the halfway point of our time in Florida, time itself accelerates. On Day One I wondered how we could make more than a week go by in a geezer/redneck paradise on a brackish inlet. Not remote, in the wilderness sense, but drastically under-amenitized in terms of what we expect in vacation towns. Like, I can’t find strong coffee and barista drinks within twelve miles. The stores don’t tempt. Nor do the restaurants – unusual, because we like some recreational dining in new towns. By Day Two, though, the lacks became pluses, sealing us off in our wonderful little house with a great big swimming pool on the Sebastian River’s estuary. We have here the world entire – Minerva, GC, me, minus some of the complexities of home. 

And now, into the downhill part of the trip, it starts to go by like life entire. What was slow, forever-ish, is suddenly faster and shorter. Too much behind, not enough ahead.   

Vacation do good things for you and yours? Tell...

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